Looking through the Autocar Archive for brilliant old stories to share on our social media channels, I’ve come across my fair share of iconic car adverts.
Many use taglines that are designed to shock or that are dripping in double entendre (Mini, I’m looking at you), but for the most part these old ads are relics from a golden age of automotive promotion and I wish that modern car commercials tapped into that spirit a bit more.
I’m sure most people picture the old VW ads when they think ‘iconic’: you know, the ones with a simple, unadorned image of a car and a bold, no-nonsense headline.
The legendary ‘Think Small’ Beetle ad from 1959 was a revolution in advertising practice for its time, for example, and holds up today as an eye-catching piece of quasi-modern art.
Another VW ad that stands out for me is one from the ’60s of a Type 2 and a gaggle of nuns standing next to the bus, with the text reading ‘mass transit’—simple, original and funny.
That’s what I love about ads like this: they get the message across and they’re memorable, helping to cement the pop culture value of the cars themselves, rather than just drily outlining their commercial appeal.
Everyone remembers Honda’s amazing ‘Cog’ spot: a captivating two-minute epic wherein all the parts from the Accord were arranged into a Rube Goldberg machine that ingeniously highlighted Honda’s attention to detail and methodical engineering processes, while laying bare the sheer amount of technical gubbins that made up this relatively normal saloon car.
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